Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massively-multiplayer role-playing game set 300 years after the events of BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic series, but still approximately 3,600 years before the events of the films.

Dear EA, how to save SW:TOR

Put it on the PS3 and Xbox, their is no MMO (since FFXI) on the 360 people would play it, cut a deal with 360 with a special with gold and tor sub combined. Otherwise you will never make money back with free to play

Put it on the PS3 and Xbox, their is no MMO (since FFXI) on the 360 people would play it, cut a deal with 360 with a special with gold and tor sub combined. Otherwise you will never make money back with free to play

Best be trollin'.

Also, they never said they were going Free-To-Play, and they don't seem to plan on doing it. MMO's don't go on consoles often because it doesn't tend to work. FFXI was hardly successful, just having it on more platforms wouldn't mean more sales, it'd mean a more widespread userbase. It would also take a lot of development time of NEW features away to making the ports. You really want them to take 1 to 2 years out of getting new features, bug fixes and the like for a console version? That's not a smart idea.

They need to sort out the population, that's all. Right now, it's spread across a vast amount of servers. Merges would work, but character transfers will too. Once people get back to populated servers it'll go a lot more smoothly.

SW:TOR is really good. It is hitting all the right notes. Its expanding in the right direction. Adding more content. Their are listening to the community. I played a lot of it (4 lvl 50 characters and quite a bit of raiding of PvP)

The thing is they did not reinvent the MMORPG. Which is what is needed currently. The community wants that, even though they say the opposite. It's like holiday 2006 and people asking for keyboards on their smartphones, but they really want an iPhone.

I love it. I don't PvP and my friends and I have a guild on a low traffic server so it always runs smoothly and we play it like we play Borderlands. It's like a multi-player KOTOR now! When GW2 comes out we will leave to play that.

@Jayzilla: I got to say, that I have a similar situation. We have a small guild of 6 people - 3 people being friends for years. We play on the biggest german server (well within the top 10 of the most populated servers worldwide), with a very big and active community. It's a blast. I couldn't care less if the SWTOR world around us is crumbling.

The flaw in SWTOR is systemic: They put way to much emphasis in the storyline presentation stuff locking the player into neat but slowly progressing quest chains. That muddles the real core of MMO design which is earning and beating team based goals. Until they address that, it doesn't matter how cheap or what platforms it is on people won't play it for that long.

Edit: And the OP is crazy if they think they can't make back the money on a Free To Play model. Just selling "Boba-Fetta Armor" would probably float them for years.

Put it on the PS3 and Xbox, their is no MMO (since FFXI) on the 360 people would play it, cut a deal with 360 with a special with gold and tor sub combined. Otherwise you will never make money back with free to play

They would make a ton of money from F2P, will probably at least break even through subs and this game would not work on a controller. I know you probably want a console game sequel to KOTOR, but it isn't gonna happen and this isn't that game anyway.

Also, they never said they were going Free-To-Play, and they don't seem to plan on doing it.

You mean aside from making it free to play up to level 15?

Do not kid yourself. This is merely the first step.

You do realise World of Warcraft is free to play up to a certain level?

I do (and they let you play more, since the f2p cap for WoW is 20), but I also realize that WoW has almost ten times the subscriber numbers of The Old Republic.

Level 20 in World of Warcraft is around the same as level 15 in SWTOR. The first cap in WoW was 60, not 50. It's around the same amount of content either way. WoW has way more subscribers and has been out a lot longer.

There's no reason that having a trial game like this means they're going Free to Play. If it were, WoW would be already be Free to Play as they implemented this trial years ago.

I'd play it if they put it on the damn mac. 30% of WoW players use mac hardware, it's an easy port that will bering players in. Every once in awhile I google it and there are tons of people who want to play it on their mac. I want to play it but I don't care enough to go through setting up bootcamp.

BioWare is ‘Looking at Free-to-Play’ for Star Wars: The Old Republic according to Kotaku (Jun 15), so they're looking at changing the business model to "save" the game. On a side note, TERA, another subscription MMO now offers a 7 day free trial up to level 23. The subscription model is just so dead these days, so I'm not surprised at this inevitable outcome for either game.

Put it on the PS3 and Xbox, their is no MMO (since FFXI) on the 360 people would play it, cut a deal with 360 with a special with gold and tor sub combined. Otherwise you will never make money back with free to play

Best be trollin'.

Also, they never said they were going Free-To-Play, and they don't seem to plan on doing it.

They are already offering accounts free up to level 15. It's only a matter of time, and honestly, they'd be better off for doing it. Look at a game like Dungeons & Dragons Online. That game could've gone the way of the dinosaurs, but because of excellent support and worthwhile content, they are now putting out their first expansion pack. If anything, that game BECAME viable because it went F2P. If Rift and SWTOR would do the same thing, they would have a much stronger chance of pulling people back in while also offering a solid alternative to WoW...as both games have plenty of content and really are premium quality products. On a F2P level, they would be trouncing every other F2P that is out there...except maybe DDO. Then again, I have a soft spot for that game.

In all honesty, the biggest thing that SWTOR NEEDS to do isn't going to consoles - it's getting their game fixed, bugs stomped out, and the content that they have needs a bit more difficulty. I remember that the only thing tough about the raids in SWTOR was Hard and Nightmare Soa. The rest of it was kind of a breeze. Meanwhile, I never got to check out any of Explosive Conflict, but I heard it was challenging...solely because of the massive healer nerfs that happened in 1.2. THAT is what caused people to quit the game - they released a patch that broke two healing classes, thereby making it nigh impossible to actually put together a group and do anything. By the time they had fixed it, the effort was too little too late.

I am curious. What happens to people who actually bought the game when it goes free to play? Is there any "ambassador program" type thing? I don't play MMOs so this question is purely academic.

Hard to say. I believe Star Trek online has both a f2p and a subscription model. Where each month you are subscriber it gets you certain perks like a quantity of material or some other thing. If I remember correctly.

Hard to say if/what SWTOR will do with past subscribers. Personally I could see them doing a split model with the f2p and sub model. Where the legacy bar/xp level is only available to those who are on a paid sub. Those who are playing f2p can still purchase the legacy "bonuses" with real money but can't unlock them by playing the for X period of time.

I always wonder why they never aim these WoW clones for a console. I figured the reason they always fail to reach their high expectations is because WoW already exists and people are playing/have played that already. But if someone only plays games on a console, WoW doesn't factor. It seems like a wide open segment.

I am curious. What happens to people who actually bought the game when it goes free to play? Is there any "ambassador program" type thing? I don't play MMOs so this question is purely academic.

Hard to say. I believe Star Trek online has both a f2p and a subscription model. Where each month you are subscriber it gets you certain perks like a quantity of material or some other thing. If I remember correctly.

Actually I believe STO was pay to play at the beginning. Jeff mentioned on a Bombcast that he had bought the lifetime membership and once they switched to free to play he became a lifetime "premium member" with added perks for having spent the $100+ dollars at launch.

People aren't going to flock to SWTOR just because it happens to be on the PS3 or 360. The game was doomed from the start when the development team chose to stick with the WoW model and not build an experience unique in its own right beyond "Hey guys, voice acting!"

The game is hardly doomed and as far as anyone knows it still has at least 1 mil subs. What they need to do is continue with the server transfers, and if needed merge some servers. Once most of the active servers are high pop things will improve dramatically. Also they do need to toughen up the end game, the operations are just too easy and give too much loot too quickly.

I am curious. What happens to people who actually bought the game when it goes free to play? Is there any "ambassador program" type thing? I don't play MMOs so this question is purely academic.

Hard to say. I believe Star Trek online has both a f2p and a subscription model. Where each month you are subscriber it gets you certain perks like a quantity of material or some other thing. If I remember correctly.

Actually I believe STO was pay to play at the beginning. Jeff mentioned on a Bombcast that he had bought the lifetime membership and once they switched to free to play he became a lifetime "premium member" with added perks for having spent the $100+ dollars at launch.

This is correct. Star Trek Online had no free-to-play option in the beginning. That was only added later.

I am curious. What happens to people who actually bought the game when it goes free to play? Is there any "ambassador program" type thing? I don't play MMOs so this question is purely academic.

Hard to say. I believe Star Trek online has both a f2p and a subscription model. Where each month you are subscriber it gets you certain perks like a quantity of material or some other thing. If I remember correctly.

Actually I believe STO was pay to play at the beginning. Jeff mentioned on a Bombcast that he had bought the lifetime membership and once they switched to free to play he became a lifetime "premium member" with added perks for having spent the $100+ dollars at launch.

This is correct. Star Trek Online had no free-to-play option in the beginning. That was only added later.

What are the odds of you quoting me twice in two different threads. Unless you're stalking me.